Google’s Chrome browser for iPhones and iPads is getting a whole lot faster and more stable today with its latest update. That’s because Chrome is now using Apple’s WKWebView rendering engine on iOS. Google says this update will reduce Chrome’s crash rate by 70% so the browsing experience will see fewer interruptions for various reasons.

Today online publishing platform WordPress, which powers approximately 25% of websites on the Internet (this site included), is getting a major redesign with a completely rebuilt wordpress.com and the introduction of a new Mac app. We’ve been getting a taste of the improvements incrementally over the last year, but today is the company’s official launch.expand full story

A noticeably large number of users are reporting issues logging into iTunes Connect, Apple’s developer portal for managing and distributing apps and other content to the App Store and iTunes. The outage appears to only be affecting a subset of users (we’ve had success logging in, for instance), but a growing number of developers have publicly voiced complaints online. Some users report not being able to access the service for going on four days:

Apple currently has yet to report any issues for iTunes Connect on its System Status page that tracks and reportsdowntime for its developer services.

Some users have reported success logging in after tweaking VPN settings, while another user posted the following workaround fix that others have used to patch what appears to be a Javascript issue at least temporarily until Apple officially addresses it:

We’ve reached out to Apple about the downtime, and we’ll update here if we hear back.

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Pebble has updated its smartwatch software and iOS app to bring various improvements, including improved Bluetooth LE connectivity and quick notification management. The notification improvements are shown in the brief video clip above. Here are the release notes:

Pebble Firmware 2.3 (Release Notes)

Improved Bluetooth LE connectivity.

Added the ability to skip to the next notification with a double-click of the Down or Up buttons.

Bug fixes and stability improvements.

iOS Pebble App 2.2.2 (Release Notes)

Enabled more new JavaScript apps to be downloadable in the Pebble appstore (Pebble apps included in this latest bundle will no longer say “Coming Soon” for iOS users).

When iOS 7 launched, developers discovered that their apps with built-in web browsers were unable to achieve the same level of JavaScript performance as the stock Safari app. This was because Apple restricted use of its improved Nitro JavaScript engine to its own app, leaving third-parties with a slower version.

As of iOS 8, however, it seems that decision has been reversed. All apps will now be able to use the same improved JavaScript engine that powers Safari. That means Google’s Chrome browser on iOS will now be just as quick as Safari, as will the pop-up browsers embedded in apps like Twitter and Facebook.